Chapter 3: A Twenty-First Century Education: The Marketization and Mediatization of School Reform Discourses

The purpose of this chapter is to illustrate how the media reinforces the marketization and mediatization of public education, particularly in regard to education policy debates surrounding reform efforts. Using different examples from media sources, we will illustrate how the media has contributed to the shaping of the public’s consciousness regarding important issues related to school reform. One outcome has been the framing of education in the United States as an economic imperative; if the nation does not “reform” public education, teachers, and how students perform on metrics such as standardized national and international tests, the United States will continue its downward economic spiral—locally, nationally, and globally. As a result, the media, intentionally or not, supports a dramatically reduced concept of public life and citizenship, one in which the vagaries and demands of the market and national and global economies drive the purposes, structures, and outcomes of education. We argue that the combination of marketization and mediatization of school reform and the education policy process has brought about a shift in the purposes of public education, one that threatens the health of U.S. society and has the potential to silence constructive criticism and dissent within the public sphere. We call upon educational scholars to take up a more rigorous study of how the media frames public school reform measures, and we point to particular research questions and methodologies that might serve as a starting point for such work.